GIS-T Nashville

By
Joe Francica

GIS-T, the
conference organized by the GIS executives of the individual state
departments of transportation (DOTs) under the auspices of the American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), was held in
Nashville this week. The conference, which is also attended by
representatives of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the
Transportation Research Board (TRB), and Canadian Transportation
Ministries, along with geospatial technology vendors, celebrated its
20th anniversary at this meeting. Many of the key discussion topics and
themes were ones that have been commonly heard in past meetings. The
pressures to keep pace with technology, to innovate with fewer people,
and to seek ways to maintain funding while the demand for more maps and
access to information increases are still the prevalent issues.

At each GIS-T meeting two key reports are published: the Summary of
State DOT GIS Activities and the Roll Call of States. The Summary of
State DOT GIS Activities is a comprised of the results of a survey
issued to each state by the FHWA. The GIS managers of the state DOTs
are asked to respond to a series of questions related to their
organizations, software deployments, cost/benefits and currently active
projects. The Roll Call of States is a quick synopsis of the project
priorities of each state or province and the issues about which they
are most concerned. For the purposes of this article, each report will
be summarized. At the end of each summary, a link to the full report
will be provided.The Summary of State DOT GIS Activities
Bruce Spear, recently retired from the FHWA and now with Cambridge
Systematics, summarized the results of the State DOT GIS Activities
report. For the first time, all 50 states responded to the survey,
which was conducted entirely online. One key question that was added to
this year's survey required states to acknowledge whether they had put
a GIS strategic plan in place. All but six reported that they had a
plan in place.

Organization and Staffing
States that maintain a core GIS unit, that is, an organization
specifically dedicated to GIS within the DOT and which supports other
DOT divisions, continue to be the most common type (55% of the DOTs) of
organizational unit. Less prevalent (25%) is an organizational
structure that integrates GIS throughout DOT divisions, which the
report identifies as an "enterprise GIS" approach. The GIS core units
typically report either through the DOT planning (34%) division or the
information services (33%) division.

With regard to staffing, GIS departments consist of, on average, seven
or eight professionals, while DOTs outsource about 40% of their GIS
work. The GIS staff expertise usually consists of those with geography
or cartography backgrounds and 21% of DOTs report having a certified
GIS professional on staff. However, only 12% of the DOTs report that
GIS certification will be a factor in the future and 23% are undecided.
The time allocation of staff members is split among six core functions.
See the graph below:

Figure
1. (Click for
larger
image)

GIS Software in Use
Spear cited that only eight DOTs consider themselves to be exclusive
one-vendor software shops, all of those being ESRI. This is down from
13 "exclusively ESRI states" reported last year. The greatest increase
is in states reporting two vendors, which jumped from 12 in 2006 to 21
this year. Many of these states identify [Bentley] MicroStation as the
second vendor, along with ESRI. For the GIS core units using desktop
GIS software, ESRI is used by 71% of the DOTs, Intergraph by 23%. For
Web applications, the distribution is 63% ESRI ArcIMIS, while
Intergraph's GeoMedia WebMap is used by 25% (see the figure below for
more details). For database software, Oracle is used by 50% of the
DOTs, while Microsoft SQL Server is used by 25%. Of those using a
spatial database management solution, ArcSDE is used by a majority,
while Oracle Spatial is used by approximately 13% of the DOTs.

Figure
2. (Click for
larger
image)

Base Map Scales and Road Network Coverage
DOTs continue a movement to higher resolution map scales, with more
than 50% of them stating that they maintain base maps at a scale of
1:5,000 or higher. Very few are at a scale smaller than 1:24,000. All
states are now maintaining a digital road centerline database and 73%
say they are distributing the data free of charge to whatever public
agency wants them. Seventy-five percent of DOTs are now "the keepers"
of spatial data beyond transportation network features and 20% report
maintaining the geodetic control for the state.

Summary
The states report that the greatest benefit of GIS technology is the
ability to tie all of the data together in an enterprise environment,
but this is also their greatest challenge, followed closely by CAD/GIS
integration.

Web-based applications continue to grow, with significant activity
spent on software updating and migration as well as the integration of
imagery.

As a review of the statewide GIS activities, the following table
provides a brief synopsis of the key projects cited as priorities:

The Roll Call of States
Frank Winters of the New York State Office of Cyber Security and
Critical Infrastructure Coordination presided over the Roll Call of
States. While the complete
report (pdf) can be viewed in its entirety, some
interesting anecdotes were delivered by those representing each state.
Below are a representative few.

Tennessee - The biggest area is assuming and working with state
GIS
office and developing a common, consolidated road geometry.

Virginia - 511 Virginia is a Virtual Earth and ESRI hybrid.

Washington - Linear Reference System (LRS) updates are a
constant
struggle and they are concerned with CAD/GIS integration.

Wyoming - GIS will be the front end of the operations for the
new
Transportation Management Center.

California - An enthusiastic Oscar Jarquin is putting an
emphasis on
developing with open source solutions and announced that their Traveler
Information Map was developed with open source stack. And he is willing
to offer this solution to any other state that wants to use it.

Idaho - David Fulton, a self-professed "non-GIS guy," said,
"All I did
was get SDE Server to work like it's supposed to."

Indiana - They are moving through legislation to create an
office of
GIS.

Iowa -They are looking to start a statewide LiDAR project.

Maine -They will be integrating their Oracle business
intelligence
platform with GIS.

Michigan -They are undertaking a huge project involving all of
the
state agencies and implementation of Oracle Spatial.

Minnesota -They have moved a lot of data to spatial data
warehouses.
They are also moving GIS to a services-oriented architecture (SOA).

Mississippi - A new division was formed within the state:
Transportation Information Division.

Montana -They are seeking funding strategies.

Nebraska -They want to know how people are using Google Earth.

New York -Their big project: modernization between highway data
and
street centerline data.

Oregon -They are interested in mixed GIS environments of ESRI
and
GeoMedia.

South Carolina -They are asking: how are people using Google
Earth?

Canadian Provinces
The Ministry of Transportation Ontario is working to spatially enable
its business data.

Prince Edward Island has a one-person GIS staff but has completed the
LRS for all roads with a complete inventory of all road features.

Manitoba has Intergraph-based applications and is interested in Oracle
Spatial data but will be using Google Earth.

Summary
There are many states wresting with the spatial data management systems
and several cite CAD/GIS integration as an ongoing concern. Imagery is
playing a larger part of data management and video logging seems less a
priority than in past years. While the work of maintaining an accurate
road centerline is still a high priority, the development of Web-based
applications to share this information is cited by more states (31)
than any other type of ongoing project.